Preview: West Ham v United

It wasn’t pretty, although little of Manchester United’s season can be categorised as such, but the Reds’ victory over Stoke City on Sunday surely ends any lingering doubts about the Premier League’s destination. United should now seal the title within the next three fixtures.

Defeat to rivals Manchester City last Monday came within an established pattern; United’s performances have dipped markedly since Real Madrid’s controversial Champions League victory last month. And while the Reds did little in the 2-0 win over the Potters on Sunday to break the paradigm, victory leaves Sir Alex Ferguson’s side to find just seven points in six games to secure league title number 20.

Indeed, Ferguson’s outfit will draw to within two results of the title should the Reds overcome West Ham United at Upton Park on Wednesday night. Less if City slip up against Wigan Athletic on the same night.

Upton Park is a ground that has not always held happy memories, of course, but with the Hammers just about safe, and United having righted a potentially listing ship, the opportunity will not be lost on those in red to profit from the trip to London’s east end.

Defeat to City, Chelsea in the FA Cup, together with underwhelming Premier League performances against Reading and Norwich City in the past month, proffered a strong impression that United’s was a season stumbling to a close. Victory at Stoke came not so much at a sprint, but at least with some comfort.

“Character,” said Ferguson, brought victory in the midlands, although critics might point to the palpable lack of that quality post-Madrid. Still, with Wayne Rooney dropping back into midfield, and United prepared to graft for victory, Ferguson’s team secured points that were always of more value than any praise for style. At least at this stage of the campaign.

“I always say you don’t leave your character in the dressing room and I think we saw that against Stoke,” said the 71-year0old United manager.

“The Britannia Stadium is not an easy place to go to and we had this swirling wind in the first half in particular, which was difficult, but nonetheless we had to find a way through it and we kept our composure. We weren’t over-anxious about the game – we kept playing the ball, passing it around.

“We didn’t make a lot of chances, but we’ve done that at Stoke over the last six years and made very few chances but usually won the games. The performance and the character the players showed was terrific.”

Sunday’s was United’s fourth victory in five visits to Stoke’s ‘new’ home ground, exposing the disingenuous claim that the Potters’ home turf is anything but a soft touch – at least for Sir Alex’ side. Still, with poor results having haunted Ferguson’s team of late, Sunday’s points will likely prove invaluable come the season’s denouement.

After all, momentum matters, which is why United’s visit to east London is certainly no time to regress into complacency, despite the Reds’ renewed 15-point Premier League lead.

“Now it’s West Ham and we have to play well again,” adds club captain Nemanja Vidić

“They play in a similar style to Stoke – we’re going to have long balls and set-pieces to deal with. Yes, you think you’re almost there but you have to win the games. It helps us build up the confidence and a few players had a great game – people like Antonio, Wayne and Robin. It’s important for players like this to be in good form for the games to come.”

Even so, Ferguson is likely to refresh his side for the trip south, with Tom Cleverley and Danny Welbeck in line for a recall. Meanwhile, Rooney could revert to a more attacking role should Cleverley come back into the side, with Shinji Kagawa most at risk of dropping to the bench.

Amid much speculation about the striker’s future this week – and role within the side – Rooney will surely welcome a striking berth in east London. After all, with a new contract to negotiate this summer, the former Evertonian’s hand is hardly strengthened each time he is deployed as a part-time midfielder.

Jonny Evans could return to Ferguson’s line-up, but Paul Scholes is unlikely to be selected after missing the past three months of United’s campaign.

“We have no injuries from Sunday against Stoke,” Ferguson told MUTV. “It was a tough game, certainly. But there were no injuries and that is a blessing of course We have a good, strong squad. We took 20 players with us to Stoke and those 20 players will go with us again on Wednesday night.”

Meanwhile, West Ham welcome the Reds with Premier League safety almost certainly secured. Sam Allardyce’s side boasts a six point advantage over the bottom three, with a healthy goal difference advantage to boot. However, the 58-year-old manager is likely to be without a clutch of defenders for United’s visit, including James Tomkins, Winston Reid and George McCartney. Mark Noble and Joe Cole remain on the sidelines.

Still, with United’s prize firmly in sight few will bet against the visitors turning in the first strong performance since Madrid’s unlikely win at Old Trafford.

“I think you have to say they are as good as they have ever been because nobody normally wins the title so easily and by so big a margin, or has this much of a margin at this stage of the season,” adds Allardyce.

“It’s pretty scary what total they might actually finish with.”

That United has won the last eight league meetings against West Ham, scoring 22 goals and conceding just three in the process says much.

Speculation surrounding Wayne Rooney’s future may be rife this week, but only three strikers have bettered the Scouser’s 599 successful passes in the opponent’s half this season – Luis Suarez, Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez – while none surpasses his average rate of 3.13 minutes per successful pass;

Shinji Kagawa’s five goals is the highest of any United midfielder this season, the result of a solid 75 per cent shot accuracy rate;

Michael Carrick has amassed 944 successful passes in the opponent’s half and is rated as the second most successful tackler in the United squad behind Rio Ferdinand, having successfully completed 61.2 per cent of his 67 attempted challenges this season.

Making these rotational changes to bring people in regardless of West Ham’s particular strengths and weaknesses and changing a winning combination (particularly as we seemed to have lost momentum completely) does not strike me as being particularly smart.

I just read a United fan responding to an ESPN blogger saying that Fergie can’t always get everything right (with reference, as you may have guessed, to the CM he selected for the City game). This got me wondering: are football managers like film directors or other people in the creative industries, where we tolerate the few odd bad choices if they from time to time produce stuff of real brilliance?

Or are they in positions where we won’t tolerate mistakes (especially horrendous ones that blow crucial games)? One wouldn’t console an sir traffic controller who direted two planes into each others’ flight paths, or a bomb disposal guy who cut the wrong wire, by reassuring them that mistakes are allowed (actually it might be a bit difficult to do this to the guy who cut blue not red.

A win tonight will set us up for a crunching home win against Villa and basically we are home and dry.

takes a massive fuck up from him for us to drop points against the riff raff, usually we’ll just play shite but stll win, the games against the top sides arewhere he needs to get it right, he fucked up against city, again

He fucked up against City, and it’s not like City are hard to figure out. Their team is basically unchanged. It’s still hard to stop them like, but some things were fundamentally wrong.
And the way he didn’t make any changes to try and salvage the game makes me think he wrote it off deliberately so that he could bollock the fuck out of them and use it as a turning point.

Upton park isn’t the easiest place to play football. Hopefully kagawa can kick on and get more starts under his belt.
He’s a good player, just needed to adapt to who he is playing with compared to when he was at Dortmund.

Our attitude is all wrong. Rooney thinks it is a stroll in the park. I beg all ofnyou to watch Evra closely. The French man seems to have forgotten henis in the team primarily to defend. Watch how many times he steams or tries to go past Kagawa while the ball is still in our own half.

Calvino said:
Our attitude is all wrong. Rooney thinks it is a stroll in the park. I beg all ofnyou to watch Evra closely. The French man seems to have forgotten henis in the team primarily to defend. Watch how many times he steams or tries to go past Kagawa while the ball is still in our own half.

6 points required from 5 games
rooney was piss poor to be fair but he can’t play that badly on monday against villa
sweet pea needed to come on a lot earlier
a point is not a disaster away especially after being 1-0 and 2-1 down
kagawa should get a decent run hopefully now

han said:
6 points required from 5 games
rooney was piss poor to be fair but he can’t play that badly on monday against villa
sweet pea needed to come on a lot earlier
a point is not a disaster away especially after being 1-0 and 2-1 down
kagawa should get a decent run hopefully now

Rooney should be dropped after that. You can’t reward him with a game, not when there are others players eager for a chance.

Thinking about it the cunt has been dropped a lot in the last few years.

Yet another piss poor performance! I keep hearing this is the best squad we’ve ever had? It seems to me to another case of ‘say something often enough and it becomes the truth’, just like there are no United fans in Manchester and United are favoured by all referees

Why take Kagawa off? Who else was going to create a winner? How can we play Jones at CM chasing a game. We can’t dominate possession with him there. Cleverley doesn’t do much, but he does help us dominate possession. Jones should only be in the middle if we set up to defend for 90 mins.

Valencia looked better today. He’s been slowly improving over the last couple of weeks. Kagawa surely should get a chance at 10. Through all his bad form, Rooney gets played at 10, can’t remember the last time he was played on the wing, although I’d rather have Welbeck there right now.

city made hard work of beating wigan but i can still see them winning their remaining games as the only tough match is next sunday
we still have to go to the arse and have the rent boys at OT but ffs the bollocks being spouted on here about fucking things up is incredible

han said:
city made hard work of beating wigan but i can still see them winning their remaining games as the only tough match is next sunday
we still have to go to the arse and have the rent boys at OT but ffs the bollocks being spouted on here about fucking things up is incredible

The pressure is off City
It’s off the players too because it’s the manager who takes the flak and who’ll get sacked before they get shipped out

The two West Ham goals had Rooney involved. Watch how he jogged back after losing possession for the first and the way Diame lost him for the second. Absolutely shocking. All game he did one excellent thing: the pinged pass to van Persie early in the second half. After that he was just getting in Kagawa’s way.

Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini on Manchester United’s 13-point advantage: “If they hadn’t scored an offside goal it would be even fewer points.”
hahaha
so much for teams being scared to play us
what a twat
west ham should have been down to 10 men after that ponyshagging cunt smacked de gea

We only get that determination when we’re behind (can’t say it was that noticeable this game though). Saw it plenty in the first half of the season. Saw it at the end of both Madrid games. Frustrating that we can’t keep it up for more than 25 mins though.

sheesh said:
I have to agree that Giggs was a pointless substitution when we were chasing the game
I think he’s lost that fire in the belly. He’s not half the player he used to be even though he’s popped up with goals this season. Goals can be replaced.
I wonder if Fergie is considering selling him. If we were to get a semi-decent bid, I would imagine we should consider it.
It’s a joke that we’re looking at him as a midfielder. Massive rebuilding job needed in the summer to ship out the dross and buy some hungry, quality players.
Why haven’t we seen that determination that we saw in the last half hour throughout the season? The way we went for it made me wonder why we waste so much time messing about.

Fergie said after the Stoke game that Rooney needed freshening up, that’s why he played him in midfield. Give him something new to get to grips with.
Today though, he was just awful. His good spells are getting shorter. He’s been dropped a few times in the last 2 seasons, and he’s simply sat out of some games. That’s perhaps the sign of a player who is on the slide. He’s been a pro for 10/11 years now, so it wouldn’t be a surprise.
How much would we get for Rooney in this state though? Ed said £25m. Might not be far off.

marlon said:
Why take Kagawa off? Who else was going to create a winner? How can we play Jones at CM chasing a game…

I thought for sure Giggs was coming on in place of Jones, who was alright in United’s half, but sometimes looked as if he no idea where to move to or what position to take up in the West Ham half. Jones should probably only play at CM if there is someone he is supposed to mark out the match.

Fairly dismal performance, but I still think we’ll beat Villa (unspectacularly at home) and draw 0-0 with Arsenal. Think City will turn Spurs over though, so it would be nice to go into the Chelsea game with the title sewn up. May be worth playing Kagawa in position (behind Van Persie) for the next two games, we don’t have many who can genuinely play in tight areas.

I looked at our results before and after the 4-3 vs. Newcastle that changed our style of play. We dominated (ball more in opposition third than ours) 14 of 19 (league) games before the change. We’ve only dominated 3 of the 14 games since (vs. Wigan, Liverpool and Norwich).

Part of that is personnel. In the 5 games we were dominated in the first half of the season, Scholes didn’t start 4 of them. He hasn’t been available since December. In the 14 games of the second half, we’ve had one of Jones, Giggs and Rooney play in 7 and been dominated every time. We’ve also dropped points in 3 of those 7 games (the only points we’ve dropped in 2013).

So far, this change has improved our results. Our points % has improved marginally, from 80.7% to 83.3% (worth about 3 points over a full season) and our goal difference per game has improved from 1.05 to 1.43 (improvement of +14 over a season). It might be dull, but the football we are playing is more successful now than it was.

I also looked at our goal difference when different CMs were playing (in GD/90 mins) over the whole season.

Scholes 0.66
Jones 0.64
Giggs 0.58
Anderson 1.59
Cleverley 1.8

Given Cleverley played most of his minutes when our GD/game was just 1.05 and he was trusted in most of the biggest games, his number is impressive. On the other hand Giggs, Scholes and Jones shouldn’t be playing at CM (although Jones has generally faced tough opposition when at CM).

We just gon’t have the players to consistently dominate territory and play effectively. Scholes helps us dominate but costs us defensively. Cleverley (and to a greater extent Anderson) have consistency and injury issues that are unacceptable for a 1st choice player. Jones helps defensively, but is ineffective in possession and adds nothing going forward.

The team is playing the only way it can. We don’t have the players to play better football.

sidney said:
Fergie said after the Stoke game that Rooney needed freshening up, that’s why he played him in midfield. Give him something new to get to grips with.

Today though, he was just awful. His good spells are getting shorter. He’s been dropped a few times in the last 2 seasons, and he’s simply sat out of some games. That’s perhaps the sign of a player who is on the slide. He’s been a pro for 10/11 years now, so it wouldn’t be a surprise.

How much would we get for Rooney in this state though? Ed said £25m. Might not be far off.

It could be that he just needs a fresh start… I bet if we did sell him, another team would get quality from Rooney again.

rooneys played about five different positions in that time yet hes the one who gets all the stick, was excellent against stoke and for some reason was playing deeper than jones against west ham

You keep making excuses for Rooney. He dropped deep to pick possession as he likes to do so Jones goes forward seeing that van Persie will be isolated otherwise. He was ok against Stoke. He has been horrible all season save two or three matches.

Alfonso Bedoya said:
It could be that he just needs a fresh start… I bet if we did sell him, another team would get quality from Rooney again.

He’s still a brilliant player (relative to some of the shite in our side) but he used to offer so much more than he does. He’d get even more stick if he wasn’t chipping in with goals.
Rooney hasn’t bossed games the way he used to. I miss the man who was a mouthy prick to refs and had an attitude. He’s been too bloody soft this season. What was all that nonsense with Carroll yesterday? He should have hit the twat, not patted his arse. Maybe he does need a new challenge but he won’t be getting any better with age, I reckon.
He still pisses me off with his occasional tendency to chip the ball. He did it once to David James and now he thinks he is messi.

Alfonso Bedoya said:
It could be that he just needs a fresh start… I bet if we did sell him, another team would get quality from Rooney again.

I agree. Rooney could do with a complete change of scene to get out of bad habits (footballing and otherwise) and feel the need to prove himself on the pitch to a bunch of French, Spanish, or whoever fans that are going to judge him much more objectively.

bman said:
I agree. Rooney could do with a complete change of scene to get out of bad habits (footballing and otherwise) and feel the need to prove himself on the pitch to a bunch of French, Spanish, or whoever fans that are going to judge him much more objectively.

Correct. And then everyone will go we should never have sold him. His most encouraging display was when he was in CM. As a forward he is an enigma. Not sure if he will be sold but you can see the case for it. Maybe a new manager could get more out of him.

rooneys played about five different positions in that time yet hes the one who gets all the stick, was excellent against stoke and for some reason was playing deeper than jones against west ham

The penalty was created by RVP as well…and even if it wasnt so what? As we can see from Rooney, who has a much spottier record from the penalty spot, penalties aint easy…

Rooney played in different positions…yes that contributes and that isnt his fault. But throughout this season how many times has Rooney played well? Even in his natural position? The first derby vs City is one. What else? Maybe 2-3 other games?

My point….RVP might have been awful for 3 months (although I would argue he’s coming back) but Rooney has been awful for the whole season with very rare bouts of brilliance once in a while

I would love to see Rooney in Man Utd next season, hopefully in much better form. However, given cost benefit analysis, I wouldnt be devastated if he was sold, provided we use the money and salary space to buy 1-2 v good players

Why not just play him at CM until the end of the season? He played well against Stoke there – maybe it’s what he needs. You get more space and time at CM than at 10, so when his touch is off, he won’t be punished so much. Kagawa is clearly much better under pressure in tight spaces and van Persie is a more clinical finisher.

We need to figure out what kind of CM would best compliment Carrick. Rooney is the closest thing we could get to having Toure in there. We’ve seen him with Jones, who has tried to be a box-box presence and also added defensive cover. That makes us a bit predictable (like Real with Alonso and Khedira). Cleverley’s energy and movement compliment Carrick well, but he doesn’t bring enough to the table to go head to head with the best teams and there are some glaring holes in his game.

If we’re just going to sell him, we should play him up front so he can pad his numbers.

Young is out for the rest of the season. Only 4 United players (excl. GKs) haven’t scored a goal this season: Young, Rio, Smalling and Jones. Vidic, Smalling, Powell and Fletcher are the only players not to have have an assist. Smalling is the only outfield player in the squad to have no goals or assists.

marlon said:
Young is out for the rest of the season. Only 4 United players (excl. GKs) haven’t scored a goal this season: Young, Rio, Smalling and Jones. Vidic, Smalling, Powell and Fletcher are the only players not to have have an assist. Smalling is the only outfield player in the squad to have no goals or assists.

To be fair, Smalling’s been dogged by injuries this season and has hardly played. That Young hasn’t scored once this season is testament to his mediocrity.

Wasn’t a knock on Smalling – just pointing out the depth of our scoring. A few CBs don’t have assists/goals. Powell/Fletcher have barely played, yet both have scored even if they don’t have assists. I doubt there’s another club in Europe where only one outfield player hasn’t scored or assisted.

I think that article is bollocks… I do think there is a problem with Ferguson, but by no means do I think Rooney is on the decline.

Rooney has had one of his worst seasons by his standards, but it’s been interrupted by little injuries… and even though Ferguson himself claims Rooney needs to play regularily to be at his best, he’s consistanly pissed him about to accomodate weird tactics and formations.

And still… as far as, goals/assists/MotMs, per game… Rooney is among the top 4 in the league.

What would he have accomplished in a full season, properly managed and motivated???

Alfonso Bedoya said:
I think that article is bollocks… I do think there is a problem with Ferguson, but by no means do I think Rooney is on the decline.
Rooney has had one of his worst seasons by his standards, but it’s been interrupted by little injuries… and even though Ferguson himself claims Rooney needs to play regularily to be at his best, he’s consistanly pissed him about to accomodate weird tactics and formations.
And still… as far as, goals/assists/MotMs, per game… Rooney is among the top 4 in the league.
What would he have accomplished in a full season, properly managed and motivated???

Alfonso Bedoya said:
And still… as far as, goals/assists/MotMs, per game… Rooney is among the top 4 in the league.
What would he have accomplished in a full season, properly managed and motivated???

Was curious with this statement so ran the stats (EPL only)
If we combine goals + assists then Alf is right, Rooney would be joint 3rd with Mata and Walcott, behind RVP and Suarez
If we just do goals Rooney would be outside the top 10 with 12 goals, tied with Lampard, Cazorla and Dzeko, behind Lukaku and Berba
From an assist standpoint he is also tied for 3rd with Gerrard, Podolski and Hazard
From a motm perspctive he is outside the top 15 with 4 to his name, tied with Snodgrass, Jaskelainen, Verto ghen and Silva
If we combine goals + assists + motm I think Rooney will be 6th just behind Cazorla
So yes agree he is still a very importnt player. Would be interesting to see how it compares with previous seasons (too lazy to do)
My question remains though:: in current form is he worth the salary? Is he worth the propsect of losing him for a free in 2 years?
I would say barely yes he is worth it, butt thats with the hope of him regaining better form next season.

By the way… did you notice, I said per game???
United have played 33 games so far this year, and Rooney has played 0 minutes in 9 of them, and 45 minutes or less in 4 others… that’s close enough to say he’s missed a third of the season… A THIRD!
You want to quibble and pedantify the fuck out of it, be my guest… but the simple math, over a full uninterrupted season would give Rooney stats of… 18 goals and 13 assists… probably minimum, concidering the perceived wisdom that he’s better when he plays every game.
Not bad for a rubbish season.

“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching’ tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.”

Alfie leave it. Rooney is burnt out. He is very unprofessional and he looks like he has lost his mojo. If he needs to move to get it back then so be it. Stop looking for Stats to back him up needlessly. God knows I have defended him many times previously. Now he is just so annoying. And frustrating.

Cal… you want to use stats to defend Young, who’s been a complete waste of a shirt this year… but dismiss them when I show that Rooney, although admittedly not having one of his better seasons, has still contributed plenty…

“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching’ tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.”

Sincerely, Rooney looks spent. He does. He will not get the fire back at United. His stats are helped by the fact that he plays for United in the PL. let us ignore the stats and watch how he rarely does the simple things. It was always going to happen.

United have played 33 games so far this year, and Rooney has played 0 minutes in 9 of them, and 45 minutes or less in 4 others… that’s close enough to say he’s missed a third of the season… A THIRD!

You want to quibble and pedantify the fuck out of it, be my guest… but the simple math, over a full uninterrupted season would give Rooney stats of… 18 goals and 13 assists… probably minimum, concidering the perceived wisdom that he’s better when he plays every game.

Not bad for a rubbish season.

I assume this is directed at me, but if not I do apologize

But if it is what the fuck are you on? Some angry pills?

First of all I was providing stats that supported your statement that he’s one of the top players so I dont get the hostility….

As for your “simple” math, Rooney has started 20 games and subbed into 4 games in epl. Thats quite similar to Podolski 21/7′, Tevez 23/5 and Cuellar 21 who all have more motm and similar to walcott 19/8 who has more assists, and more or similar to Ba, Lukaku, Dzeko and Lampard eho all has equal or better number of goals

So yes, still supports the point that he’s a top all-rounded player as when you combine all the stats he’s definitely up there, although on individual stats he might be outside the top 4 or 5

As for “pedantify” I simply use facts and figures to support a hypothesis. Fact-based analysis…..some might call it good practice

I also never said he’s had a rubbish season. I simply wonder aloud whether this is as good as his past contributions (whcih I was too lazy to do) and I also wonder whether he is still worth his salary, and whether he is worth risking losing on a free in 2 years.

Anantax said:
I assume this is directed at me, but if not I do apologize

But if it is what the fuck are you on? Some angry pills?

First of all I was providing stats that supported your statement that he’s one of the top players so I dont get the hostility….

As for your “simple” math, Rooney has started 20 games and subbed into 4 games in epl. Thats quite similar to Podolski 21/7′, Tevez 23/5 and Cuellar 21 who all have more motm and similar to walcott 19/8 who has more assists, and more or similar to Ba, Lukaku, Dzeko and Lampard eho all has equal or better number of goals

So yes, still supports the point that he’s a top all-rounded player as when you combine all the stats he’s definitely up there, although on individual stats he might be outside the top 4 or 5

As for “pedantify” I simply use facts and figures to support a hypothesis. Fact-based analysis…..some might call it good practice

I also never said he’s had a rubbish season. I simply wonder aloud whether this is as good as his past contributions (whcih I was too lazy to do) and I also wonder whether he is still worth his salary, and whether he is worth risking losing on a free in 2 years.

Sorry Mate, I didn’t mean it to sound as hostile as it did… having said that, I do hate some of the fiddly little nit-picking statistical numptery, that some roll out to debate the difference between one or two percentage points… as if the one or two points really matter.

You see… lol… this is what I’m talking about… ffs… that list puts Rooney out of context… if you were to calculate Rooneys stats, roughly giving him stats based on him playing 30+ games, you could assume he would have racked up over 30-G+A points… but that’s not the only issue… it does however suggest that, for a player having supposedly such a rubbish season… he’s still contributing right up there with the best.

And so he should do on 250k a week! The issue with Rooney is not that he contributes, but is whether he contributes as much as someone who is on that money and the supposed best English player of his generation should. One would argue that he doesn’t. Really he should be pulling us through ties like Madrid – that is why he is paid the big bucks.
In the background we have his questionable off the field habits, his request to leave a few years back and his poor attitude to looking after himself physically. His flawed mindset is driving this. He should learn from Ronaldo’s level of professionalism.
He seems burned out and we might have seen the best of him as a striker. I’d play him in midfield where he can influence the game more, its not as if we are flush in AM. If not ship him off, we have enough strikers and Kagawa is a natural number 10. Use the money to address the midfield. The rest of the squad is very strong.

Alfonso Bedoya said:
You see… lol… this is what I’m talking about… ffs… that list puts Rooney out of context… if you were to calculate Rooneys stats, roughly giving him stats based on him playing 30+ games, you could assume he would have racked up over 30-G+A points… but that’s not the only issue… it does however suggest that, for a player having supposedly such a rubbish season… he’s still contributing right up there with the best.

Look at the goals/assists per minute – that was the point of the table. He’s the most productive player on the list for the minutes he’s played. I was putting all of their stats in the context of the time they’d spent on the pitch – thought that was what you were getting at.

marlon said:
Look at the goals/assists per minute – that was the point of the table. He’s the most productive player on the list for the minutes he’s played. I was putting all of their stats in the context of the time they’d spent on the pitch – thought that was what you were getting at.

Yep… your right… fuck sake… must have woke up with the hump, and didn’t know it.

“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching’ tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.”

Alfonso Bedoya said:
Sorry Mate, I didn’t mean it to sound as hostile as it did… having said that, I do hate some of the fiddly little nit-picking statistical numptery, that some roll out to debate the difference between one or two percentage points… as if the one or two points really matter.

No worries mate

To be totally honest, if your post hadnt prompted me to do the stats, I wouldntve thought Rooney was performing that well this season….so was pleasant surprise to see he was one of the top players…